Fun With Fallacies

Deadclown · Post by **Deadclown** » Tue May 10, 2011 4:41 pm

We should all know them intimately. Even if we occasionally feel like we should just make a bot that counters, 'You can't prove God doesn't exist!' with, 'Argument from Ignorance and you have the Burden of Proof'.

Here is one good resource for reference, but it is not exhaustive. I know I found a few I didn't know about previously.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/

So, the questions for the topic are:

What are your favorites (formal or informal)? What do you see most often? What are some of the most over the top crazy, or subtle and hard to spot examples you can recall people trying to pull?

nygreenguy · Post by **nygreenguy** » Wed May 11, 2011 8:08 am

I have several.

I know of many which I can tell are fallacies, but I just cant put my finger on WHAT fallacy...

Deadclown · Post by **Deadclown** » Wed May 11, 2011 8:19 am

nygreenguy wrote:I have several.

I know of many which I can tell are fallacies, but I just cant put my finger on WHAT fallacy...

That's fair. It is sometimes tough to *spot* them. It is also sometimes hard to call a spade a spade in debate. Maybe we could use an ongoing topic (or this one) to post examples of things you think are fallacious. We can put our heads together to decide how and why.

Goat · Post by **Goat** » Wed May 11, 2011 8:39 am

The informal fallacy I find is often used is the fallacy fallacy. Many times the people who most often use such fallacies of 'argument from ignorance' and 'straw man' will claim that the person who pointed out those fallacies are using them when they are not. This shows a lack of understanding what a fallacy is, and what those fallacies actually are.

These people attempt to throw your points back at you, but without an understanding of what the points are, and why the logical fallacy can apply to them, but not to you.

McCulloch · Post by **McCulloch** » Wed May 11, 2011 1:17 pm

Do they ever tire of Pascal's Wager?

http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 769#380769

Ragna · Post by **Ragna** » Thu May 12, 2011 9:14 am

Circular reasoning. It's quite common.

But I have to agree that sometimes they're difficult to identify, it usually happens because the flawed logic turns out to be a conglomerate of many fallacies put together and not just a single one, which is worse.

bernee51 · Post by **bernee51** » Fri May 13, 2011 2:25 am

Deadclown wrote:We should all know them intimately. Even if we occasionally feel like we should just make a bot that counters, 'You can't prove God doesn't exist!' with, 'Argument from Ignorance and you have the Burden of Proof'.

Here is one good resource for reference, but it is not exhaustive. I know I found a few I didn't know about previously.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/

So, the questions for the topic are:

What are your favorites (formal or informal)? What do you see most often? What are some of the most over the top crazy, or subtle and hard to spot examples you can recall people trying to pull?

The Argument from Ignorance

Deadclown · Post by **Deadclown** » Fri May 13, 2011 10:20 am

One of the interesting ones (that Zzyxx says is fairly common) that I've seen since coming to the board was posed by dianaiad during an exchange discussing the morality of God. I was (for the sake of argument) debating within her belief structure that God is amoral. She kept trying to insist that because I believe in neither God, nor an Afterlife, then I have no place discussing his morality. This is an example of an Ad Hominem Tu Quoque fallacy, or an attack on the person because their present argument does not jive with past claims. When of course, the logic of an individual argument can stand on its own, and people can argue/understand things they do not believe personally.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacie ... uoque.html

http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... sc&start=0

It happens a lot all throughout, so I'll just pick out the best examples.

dianaiad wrote:That's the problem; you don't believe in a Deity, so you have no way of discerning whether He is moral or amoral.

Frankly, sir, you are arguing that God is amoral because YOU don't know what comes after death, and aren't about to acknowledge the description of a deity Who does.

I'm simply pointing out that this is what your argument boils down to; you are concluding that God does not exist, or is amoral, because...he doesn't exist.

Since you do not believe in Him, you can't argue for His amorality because YOU do not believe in a life after death.

From your arguments, I can only gather that you think He is amoral because, of course, there is no life after death.

When you discuss the amorality of the God I believe in, you can't use the God you don't.

To her credit, after I pointed it out and thoroughly explained the fallacy she stopped doing it.

Meow Mix · Post by **Meow Mix** » Thu May 19, 2011 10:12 pm

If by "favorite" you mean the one that I abhor the most, that's definitely the fallacy of special pleading. It crops up in virtually any argument regarding God -- as soon as the theist is backed into a logical corner, they magically escape by invoking the mysteriousness of God.

Have the theist cornered with the Problem of Evil? No worries -- there's not actually any evil, because God is mysterious and the bad stuff is actually magically somehow incomprehensibly good!

Have the theist cornered with a contradiction in their definition of God? No worries -- somehow magically God can incomprehensibly and mysteriously get around it!

(And so on, and so on, ad nauseum)

Meow Mix · Post by **Meow Mix** » Wed Jun 08, 2011 9:23 pm

Ok, lately, the fallacy that I dislike the most is definitely missing the point. There is nothing more frustrating.

Debating Christianity and Religion

Fun With Fallacies

Fun With Fallacies

Re: Fun With Fallacies